[MUD-Dev] Re: Issues from the digests and Wout's list

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199704250543.AAA12618 at dfw-ix11.ix.netcom.com>, on 04/24/97 
   at 11:03 PM, "Jon A. Lambert" <jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> said:

>> From: clawrenc at cup.hp.com

>While I love the use of regular expressions in COLD, the enhancements
>they have made to context are decidedly irritating.  One's order of
>verb processing can easily change by moving about the world and
>picking up and dropping items.    I prefer a consistent and fixed
>context order. It makes for a more comfortable user interface.

Mind detailing exactly what you like and dislike about their changes
to the definition of context?  (Been a while since I looked)

>> And thus you get state flags and all the endless horrors and nastiness
>> that they bring.  No thanks.
>> 
>I love flags.  I have never experienced the least amount of
>queasiness in using them.  :-)  

I generically dislike flags where they attempt to produce a binary
state out of an analog spectrum.  I also find they lead to restrictive
thinking about the approach to a model or solution.

>They certainly have their place in implementing an object-oriented
>design. 

Absolutely.  However those are not quite the forms of state flags we
have been discussing.  I've no problem in using flags to distinguish
among cleanly iterated functional sets, but using them to define
arbitrary states from an analog spectrum is silly.

>The result is object oriented code that can be as difficult to follow
>as unstructured code. The LP and MOO libs I have seen exhibit their
>own set of horrors along this line.  

I see more of the horrors as sourced in contributants to the library
being unfamiliar with the library as a whole, or its basic design
approach.

>While I don't particularly agree
>with the design goals(?) of the Mud++ project, the inheritance
>structure is simple (too simple perhaps?) enough to allow code to be
>easily followed and highly maintainable.  

Agreed.

>I have been enmeshed in Language design for the the last couple of
>weeks.  PCCTS is slicker than one-eyed cephlapods from Paraworld
>Blue.   More later.. splub gnog furb Squaz.

Grok forblesnatz.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...